The CIA has revealed the secret history of its spy animals from the Cold War

In early 1974, Do Da was the first of his spying clbad. He was on the verge of becoming a top CIA agent: his performance was better when he was under pressure, he could stand more weight than the others and escape those who They will attack. But when he was subjected to the most difficult examination of his training, he disappeared after being defeated by two copies of the same species: the crows. The bird was for a long time a central figure of a program that the CIA used during the Cold War in its fight against the Soviet Union.

The intelligence agency on Thursday released dozens of documents on training programs for cats, dogs, dolphins and birds, intended to be used as "spies". The CIA badyzed how to use cats as roving listeners – "audio surveillance vehicles" – and place electrical implants in the dogs' brains to see if they could be controlled remotely. But none of these programs go too far.

More extensive took the experiences with the dolphins, who were trained to turn them into potential saboteurs and spy on Soviet nuclear submarines, perhaps the greatest threat to American power in the mid-1960s. The Oxygas and Chirilogy projects aimed to determine if dolphins could be trained to replace human divers and place explosives on moored or moving vessels or sneak into Soviet ports to drop acoustic beacons or missile detection instruments. These projects have also been abandoned.

"Live sensors"

But he was captivated by the imagination of American intelligence officials during the Cold War: birds: pigeons, hawks, crows, owls and even some migratory birds. The CIA recruited ornithologists to determine which migratory birds spent part of the year in an area southeast of Moscow, around the town of Chikhany, where the Soviets had weapons factories. chemical.

The agency perceived the birds as "living sensors" that, depending on their diet, they could reveal in their gut the substances that the Soviets were experimenting with. In the early 1970s, the CIA turned to raptors and crows, hoping to be trained to participate in missions such as the placement of micrograveurs in the windows. The spy pigeon experiments were conducted by the CIA in the vicinity of the US capital: Andrews Air Force Air Base and Washington Shipyard were selected for training. However, the documents show that none of the programs became operational for a number of technical and other reasons.

As part of a project baptized as Axiolite, coaches based on San Clemente Island, on the south coast of California, have taught birds to travel miles and miles between a ship and the coast. If one of the "candidates" pbaded the exam, he was sent to Soviet territory with a camera attached to his body to take pictures and return to the starting point.

The birds were smart but "maybe too slow to prevent attacks" from other birds, according to a report. Two hawks died of diseases. The most promising bird was the raven Do Da. Resistant, able to determine a height and favorable winds and smart enough to circumvent the attacks of his peers: he was "the star of the project," wrote a scientist. But the June 19 training was fatal. Other crows attacked it and it was never seen again.

Pigeons on Leningrad

The pigeons, used for two millennia as messengers and to take pictures during the First World War, were another high hopes of the American intelligence services.

The CIA had hundreds of pigeons, which she trained on her territory by equipping them with cameras. The goal was to spy on the shipyards of Lenigrado (today St. Petersburg), where the Soviets built their nuclear submarines. But the experience was not enough: many birds ran away with their expensive cameras and never found them again.

Published documents do not specify whether the Leningrad operation was carried out, but a 1978 CIA report makes it clear that there were too many questions about the reliability of these birds.

S.D.